I Had Raised Dust: Selected Works

by Daniil Kharms

  I set about rowing with might and main, but the oars kept jumping out of the rowlocks and the boat only moved slowly. Finally, after an enormous effort, I caught up with the beauty and we got acquainted. She was called Yekaterina Pavlovna. We took back her boat and Yekaterina Pavlovna moved over to mine. She turned out to be a very witty conversationalist. I had decided to dazzle my friends with wit, and so I got out your letter and made a start on reading it: 'Hello, there, Daniil Ivanovich, we are completely lost without you. Lyonya has bought himself some new ...' and so on. Yekaterina Pavlovna suggested that, if we pulled in to the bank, then I might see something. And I did, I saw Yekaterina Pavlovna making off, and out of the bushes there crept a filthy urchin, saying: -- Mister, give us a ride in yer boat.

  This evening the letter came to grief. It happened like this: I was standing on the balcony, reading your letter and eating semolina. At that moment Auntie called me into the living room to help her wind the clock. I covered the semolina with the letter and went into the room. When I came back the letter had absorbed all the semolina into itself and I ate it.

  The weather in Tsarskoye Selo is well set: variable cloud, south-west wind, possible rain.

  This morning an organ-grinder came into our garden and played a trashy waltz, filched a hammock and ran away.

  I read a very interesting book about how one young man fell in love with a certain young person, and this young person loved another young man, and this young man loved another young person and this young person loved another young man yet again, who loved not her but another young person.

  And suddenly this young person stumbles down a trapdoor and fractures her spine. But when she has completely recovered from that, she suddenly catches her death of cold and dies. Then the young man who loves her does himself in with a revolver shot. Then the young person who loves this young man throws herself under a train. Then the young man who loves this young person climbs up a tram pylon from grief and touches the live wire, dying from an electric shock. Then the young person who loves this young man stuffs herself with ground glass and dies from perforation of the intestines. Then the young man who loves this young person runs away to America and takes to the drink to such a degree that he sells his last suit and, for the lack of a suit, he is obliged to lie in hospital, where he suffers from bedsores, and from these bedsores he dies.

  In a few days I shall be in town. I definitely want to see you. Give my best wishes to Valentina Yefimovna and Yakov Semyonovich.

  Daniil Kharms

  A Letter to T. A. Meyer-Lipavsky

  Aug. 1st, 1932. Kursk.

  Dear Tamara Aleksandrovna, Valentina Efimovna, Leonid Savelyevich, Yakov Semyonovich, and Valentina Efimovna.

  Send my greetings to Leonid Savelyevich, Valentina Efimovna, and Yakov Semyonovich.

  How are you doing, dear Tamara Aleksandrovna, Valentina Efimovna, Leonid Savelyevich, and Yakov Semyonovich? What is new with Valentina Efimovna? Please do write to me, dear Valentina Efimovna, about how Yakov Semyonovich and Leonid Savelyevich are feeling.

  I missed you very much, dear Tamara Aleksandrovna, and also Valentina Efimovna, and Leonid Savelyevich, and Yakov Semyonovich. And what about Leonid Savelyevich, is he still at the dacha or already returned? If he is back, please send him my greetings. And also my greetings to Valentina Efimovna, Leonid Savelyevich, and Tamara Aleksandrovna. All of you are so much on my mind that at times it seems I could never forget you. Valentina Efimovna stands so lifelike before my eyes, and even Leonid Savelyevich is rather lifelike. Yakov Semyonovich is to me like a brother and a sister, and also you are like a sister or at the very least a cousin. Leonid Savelyevich is to me like a brother-in-law and also Valentina Efimovna like a relative of sorts.

  Every now and then I remember one of you or another, and always with such a terrifying clarity and distinctness. But none of you has appeared to me in dreams, and this even surprises me. For if I had dreamt of Leonid Savelyevich it would be one thing, but if instead I imagined Yakov Semyonovich it would be an altogether different matter. One cannot disagree with that. And if I dreamt of you, it would have been again a different matter than if I had dreamt of Valentina Efimovna. And wasn't it quite a happening a few days ago! Imagine that as I was almost ready to go somewhere I took my hat to put it on, and suddenly I noticed that the hat seems to be not mine, as if mine but then, it seems, it's not mine. Gee, I said, what a story! Is it my hat or not? And in the meantime I'm putting it on, all the while. As I had it on, I looked at myself in the mirror: well, the hat seemed as if mine. Although I'm still thinking: what if it is not mine. But then it's perhaps mine. It turned out to be mine, in fact. Also Vvedensky got caught in a fishnet while bathing in the river and was so upset that as soon as he was freed he came home and had a drink. And please also write to me about your life. Has Leonid Savelyevich already returned from the dacha or not yet.

  Daniil Kharms

  A Letter

  Dear Nikandr Andreyevich,

  I have received your letter and straight away I realised that it was from you. At first I thought that it might by chance not be from you, but as soon as I unsealed it I immediately realised it was from you, though I had been on the point of thinking that it was not from you. I am glad that you, long ago now, got married, because when a person gets married to the one he wanted to marry, then this means he has got what he wanted. I am very glad you got married, because when a person marries the one he wanted to marry, that means he has got what he wanted. Yesterday I received your letter and immediately thought that this letter was from you, but then I thought that it seemed not to be from you, but unsealed it and saw: it really is from you. You did exactly the right thing, writing to me. First you didn't write, and then you suddenly wrote, although before that, before that period when you didn't write, you also used to write. Immediately as I received your letter, I straight away decided that it was from you and, then, I was very glad that you had already got married. For, if a person should feel like getting married, then he really has to get married, come what may. Therefore I am very glad that you finally got married to the very one you wanted to marry. And you did exactly the right thing, writing to me. I was greatly cheered up on seeing your letter and I even immediately thought it was from you. It's true, while I was unsealing it, the thought did flash across my mind that it was not from you, but then, all the same, I decided it was from you. Thank you for writing. I am grateful to you for this and very glad for you. Perhaps you can't guess why I am so glad for you, but I will tell you at once that I am glad for you because you got married, and to the very one you wanted to marry. And, you know, it is very good to marry the very one you want to marry, because then you have got the very thing you wanted. It's for that very reason that I am so glad for you. But also I am glad because you wrote me a letter. I had even from some distance decided that the letter was from you, but as I took it in my hands I then thought: but what if it's not from you? But then I start to think: no, of course it's from you. I unseal the letter myself and at the same time I think: from you or not from you? From you or not from you? Well, as I unsealed it, then I could see: it's from you. I was greatly cheered and decided to write you a letter as well. There's a lot which has to be said, but literally there's no time. I have written what I had time to write in this letter and the rest I shall write another time, as now there really isn't time at all. It's a good thing, at least, that you wrote me a letter. Now I know that you got married a long time ago. I, from your previous letters too, knew that you had got married and now I see again: it's absolutely true, you have got married. And I'm very glad that you got married and wrote me a letter. I straight away, as soon as I saw your letter, decided that you had got married again. Well, I think it's a good thing that you have again got married and written me a letter about it. Now write to me and tell me who your new wife is and how it all came about. Say hello from me to your new wife.

  Daniil Kharms

  (1933)

  Letter to K. V. Pugachova: an Ex
tract

  ...I don't know the right word to express that strength in you which so delights me. I usually call it purity.

  I have been thinking about how beautiful everything is at first! How beautiful primary reality is! The sun and the grass are beautiful, grass and stone, and water, a bird, a beetle, a fly, and a human being (a kitten and a key, a comb). But if I were blind and deaf, had lost all my faculties, how could I know all this beauty? everything gone and nothing for me at all. But I suddenly acquire touch anti immediately almost the whole world appears again. I invent hearing and the world improves significantly. I invent all the other faculties and the world gets even bigger and better. The world starts to exist as soon as I let it in to me. Never mind its state of disorder, at least it exists! However, I started to bring some order into the world. And that's when Art appeared. Only at this point did I grasp the true difference between the sun and a comb but, at the same time, I realised that they are one and the same.

  Now my concern is to create the correct order. I am carried away by this and only think of this. I speak about it, try to narrate it, describe it, sketch it, dance it, construct it. I am the creator of a world and this is the most important thing in me. How can I not think constantly about it! In everything I do, I invest the consciousness of being creator of a world. And I am not making simply some boot, but, first and foremost, I am creating something new. It doesn't bother me that the boot should turn out to be comfortable, durable and elegant. It's more important that it should contain that same order pertaining in the world as a whole, so that world order should not be the poorer, should not be soiled by contact with skin and nails, so that, notwithstanding the form of the boot, it should preserve its own form, should remain the same as it was, should remain pure.

  It is that same purity which permeates all the arts. When I am writing poetry, the most important thing seems to me not the idea, not the content, and not the form, and not the misty conception of 'quality', but something even more misty and incomprehensible to the rationalistic mind, but comprehensible to me and, I hope, to you (...) -- it is the purity of order.

  This purity is one and the same -- in the sun, in the grass, in a human being and in poetry. True art is on a par with primary reality; it creates a world and constitutes the world's primary reflection. It is indisputably real.

  But, my God, what trivialities make up true art! The Divine Comedy is a great piece of work, but [Pushkin's] lines 'Through the agitated mists the moon makes its way' are no less great. For in both there is the same purity and consequently an identical proximity to reality, that is to independent existence. That means it is not simply words and thoughts printed on paper, but a piece of work which is just as real as the cut-glass bubble for the ink standing in front of me on the table. These verses seem to have become a piece of work which could be taken off the paper and hurled at the window, and the window would smash. That's what words can do!

  But, on the other hand, how helpless and pitiful these same words can be! I never read the newspapers. They are a fictitious world, not the created one. Just pitiful, down-at-heel typographical print on rotten prickly paper.

  Does a person need anything, apart from life and art? I don't think so: nothing else is needed, as everything genuine is to be found in them.

  I think that purity can be in everything, even in the way a person eats soup.

  (1933)

  Letter to his sister Ye. I. Yuvachova

  28 February, 1936

  Dear Liza,

  I convey my best wishes to Kirill on his birthday and similarly congratulate his parents on successfully fulfilling the plan prescribed for them by nature for the raising up to the age of two years of human offspring, unable to walk, but therefore gradually beginning to destroy everything around and finally, in attaining this junior pre-school age, belabouring across the head with a voltmeter stolen from his father's writing table his loving mother, who has failed to evade the highly skillfully delivered assaults of her not as yet fully mature child, who is planning already in his immature skull, having done away with his parents, to direct all his most penetrating attentions towards his venerable grandfather and by the same means demonstrate a mental development allotted beyond his years, in honour of which, on the 28th of February, will gather a couple of admirers of this indeed outstanding phenomenon, among whose number, to my great chagrin, I shall not be able to be, finding myself at the time in question under a certain pressure, being enraptured on the shores of the Gulf of Finland by an ability, innate since childhood, of grabbing a steel pen and, having dipped it in an ink-well, in short sharp phrases expressing my profound and at times even in a certain way highly elevated thoughts.

  Daniil Kharms

  Letter to Aleksandr Vvedensky

  Dear Aleksandr Ivanovich,

  I have heard that you are saving money and have already saved thirty-five thousand. What for? Why save money? Why not share what you have with those who do not even have a totally spare pair of trousers? I mean, what is money? I have studied this question. I possess photographs of the banknotes in widest circulation: to the value of a rouble, three, four and even five roubles. I have heard of banknotes of an intrinsic worth of up to 30 roubles at a time! But, as for saving them: what for? Well, I am not a collector. I have always despised collectors who amass stamps, feathers, buttons, onions and so on. They are stupid, dull superstitious people. I know for example that what are called 'numismatists' -- that's those who accumulate coins -- have the superstitious habit of putting them, have you ever thought where? Not on the table, not in a box, but... on their books! What do you think of that? Whereas money can be picked up, taken to a shop and exchanged, well... let's say for soup (that's a kind of food), or for grey-mullet sauce (that's also a kind of foodstuff).

  No, Aleksandr Ivanovich, you are almost as couth a person as I, yet you save money and don't change it into a range of other things. Forgive me, dear Aleksandr Ivanovich, but that is not terribly clever! You've simply gone a little stupid living out there in the provinces. There must be no one to talk to, even. I'm sending you my picture so that you will be able at least to see before you a clever, cultivated, intellectual, first-rate face.

  Your friend Daniil Kharms

  (late 1930s)

  The Old Woman

  A Tale

  . . . And between them the following conversation takes place.

  Hamsun

  In the courtyard an old woman is standing and holding a clock in her hands. I walk through, past the old woman, stop and ask her:

  -- What time is it?

  -- Have a look -- the old woman says to me.

  I look and see that there are no hands on the clock.

  -- There are no hands here -- I say.

  The old woman looks at the clock face and tells me: -- It's now a quarter to three.

  -- Oh, so that's what it is. Thank you very much -- I say and go on.

  The old woman shouts something after me but I walk on without looking round. I go out on to the street and walk on the sunny side. The spring sun is very pleasant. I walk on, screwing up my eyes and smoking my pipe. On the corner of Sadovaya I happen to run into Sakerdon Mikhailovich. We say hello, stop and talk for a long time. I get fed up with standing on the street and I invite Sakerdon Mikhailovich into a cellar bar. We drink vodka, eat hard-boiled eggs and sprats and then say goodbye, and I walk on alone.

  At this point I remember that I had forgotten to turn off the electric oven at home. This is very annoying. I turn round and walk home. The day had started so well and this was the first misfortune. I ought not to have taken to the street.

  I get home, take off my jacket, take my watch out of my waistcoat pocket and hang it on a nail; then I lock the door and lie down on the couch. I shall recline and try to get to sleep.

  The offensive shouting of urchins can be heard from the street. I lie there, thinking up various means of execution for them. My favourite one is to infect them all with tetanus so that they suddenly stop
moving. Their parents can drag them all home. They will lie in their beds unable even to eat, because their mouths won't open. They will be fed artificially. After a week the tetanus can pass off, but the children will be so feeble that they will have to lie in their beds for a whole month. Then they will gradually start to recover but I shall infect them with a second dose of tetanus and they will all croak.